The Queen of Hearts

by Kimmery Martin

  “Strok— Cerebrovascular accident?”

  “Okay. Yep. CVAs, subarachnoid hemorrhages, brain stuff; good. Let’s have one more.”

  Oh hell. Something about Dr. McMann always wiped my hard drive. How long was it academically acceptable to stand openmouthed in a desperate search for data retrieval? Let’s see, let’s see. A malfunction in the heart or brain could kill you instantly . . . What else? Lungs!

  “Pulmonary embolism!” I said triumphantly. Then I deflated. “What do you think happened to him?” I asked.

  “He’ll be a coroner’s case for sure,” said Dr. McMann. “You should follow up to find out. Okay. I know we’re behind now, but why don’t you take ten minutes to grab us a couple good coffees?”

  “I will,” I agreed gratefully. I headed briskly for the elevator, turning when Dr. McMann called out.

  “Medical student?” she hollered.

  “Yes?” I answered.

  “What did we talk about during the code?” She cocked her finger into a gun shape and fired at me. “Don’t forget arrhythmias.”

  —

  The elevator was crowded when I got on. I wedged into the corner, next to two chatting girls in pink scrubs, still thinking about Mr. Dubois. He was clean-shaven, handsome; he looked tall and fit. He’d been wearing a business suit. How could someone like that die without warning? What would his wife do now?

  “. . . Nick Xenokostas, you know, the fifth-year surgery guy?” said an unfamiliar man’s voice somewhere behind me.

  I immediately forgot about Mr. Dubois. I arched my neck and slowly half turned, trying to look as if I were not paying attention. The speaker was enormous; he and his companion were both extremely tall, extremely strong-looking men in their late twenties, wearing long white coats and scrubs. Probably orthopedic surgery residents.

  “. . . told a nurse he’d forgotten his wife’s birthday. He said he needed to send her flowers.” The ortho guy laughed.

  “More like he forgot he has a wife,” said the other guy. “Isn’t he always banging a nurse?”

  “Yeah, but I think his wife lives in another state or something. Maybe she’s a resident somewhere else?” The elevator pinged: we arrived at the basement. The ortho residents and the candy stripers and the patients all got off. I stood still, feeling my breath stuck somewhere in the middle of my chest. A new crowd of people got on the elevator and pushed buttons; the elevator went back up.

  After a few minutes of riding aimlessly, I found my feet propelling me off, back to the ER. Wordlessly, I picked up a chart and began reading. The words were a hopeless blur. I set the chart back down.

  “. . . Student . . . ? Hey, medical student!”

  It was Dr. McMann. She was waving a hand in front of my face. “Where’s the coffee?”

  “Uh. I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Sorry? What?” snapped Dr. M. “You didn’t go?”

  “No. No, I’m sorry. I can go now.”

  “Forget it,” said Dr. McMann crossly. She was a blazing five-foot tower of irritation. She tossed a lock of glossy dark hair over her shoulder and stalked off. I slumped to the desk in relief, but it was short-lived; Dr. McMann spun back around and issued a pissed-off order for me to go see patients. I nodded dumbly.

  Dr. M studied me. “What’s the matter?” she asked finally. “Are you upset over the code?”

  I had forgotten about the code, but now I glanced over at the room where Mr. Dubois lay. The curtain was pulled, but I could see a set of smallish feet in gym shoes next to the gurney: Mrs. Dubois. She must have been in there with the body of her dead husband, trying to accept the seismic shift in her reality. I nodded again.

  Dr. McMann’s gaze softened. Maybe she will let me go home, I thought, with something approaching relief. Or maybe I’d be given a break to collect myself. I looked up.

  “Well, buck up!” barked Dr. M, charging over. “We can’t go around falling to pieces when we lose someone or we’d never get through the day. Back on the horse, medical student.” She clapped me on the back, causing me to expel my breath in an undignified oof. I lumbered up and headed for the next patient’s room.

  —

  Somehow, the day passed.

  Later, looking back, I could not remember a single patient I saw or anything I did for the rest of the shift. By late afternoon, Dr. McMann gave up on me and sent me home. Arriving at my door, I lifted my hand, which was as weighty as Jupiter, and pushed open the door. But something stopped me before I entered.

  I wheeled around and ran to the street, flinging open the door to the Colt like I was about to be skinned alive if I didn’t peel out in under five seconds. The engine caught and I screeched down the street, skidded around the corner, and headed for the Highlands, my breath coming in distraught bursts.

  I was going to confront Nick.

  Or more likely, I was going to confront his empty apartment, which was fixing to suffer a disaster akin to the wrath of God if he wasn’t home. I’d plow through his personal items—starting with the mysterious drawer of boxers—confirming he was a vile, traitorous, contemptible married bastard, and then I’d unleash the full fury of a woman scorned, and . . . and . . . Well, I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d do at that point. Suddenly I burst into tears, thinking I’d never be with him again, ever.

  Arriving at his apartment, I thundered up the stairs to his door and retrieved his spare key from its inexplicably stupid location under the only flowerpot on his porch. Bursting through the door, I started toward his bedroom, but a shuffling sound from the living room gave me pause. I stepped inside and flipped on the light.

  Nick sat on the couch.

  “Ah,” I said softly. Uncertainty gripped me at the sight of his face. In a strangely detached way, I waited to see which of my emotions would triumph. Was I most sad? Hurt? Disappointed? Was I going to cry? No, in fact, it seemed I did have a dominant emotion, after all: rage. “You son of a bitch!” I screamed, picking up a thousand-page study guide from the side table by the couch—Surgical Secrets, appropriately enough—and launching it at Nick’s head. It missed, so I grabbed another book.

  I threw that one, but I got distracted and my aim was off. Someone else was in the apartment too: I froze as I heard a door shut in the bedroom and the faint sound of someone moving around. No. I looked at Nick again.

  “Is that . . . ? Is that your wife?”

  Nick shifted guiltily on the couch. I noticed he was shirtless, his smooth blond hair ruffled in the back.

  “Zadie,” he began, looking miserable.

  “Don’t say ‘Zadie’ to me!” I shrieked irrationally. “I said, ‘Is that your wife?’”

  He stared at the floor.

  “How could you let me love you if you are married?” I wailed. “How could you?”

  “Zadie, I’m sor—”

  I felt my face crumple up. “I am brokenhearted,” I said in a tiny voice.

  A stricken look I’d never seen before crossed his face. He jumped up, starting toward me. “I don’t want this,” he said. “Please. I love—”

  I put my hands over my ears. Then I started running; I ran out of the room, and out of his apartment, and down the street to my car, where I doubled over, the noisy sound of my crying echoing down the empty street.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  THE IRONY OF TRAUMA

  Zadie, Present Day

  I regarded the small penis in front of me. Its owner had been restrained in a supine frog-legged position on a board, his torso and arms tightly wrapped in a blanket, with Velcro straps tying him down. My friend Mary Sarah seized the opportunity to inject lidocaine around the circumference of his penis—three o’clock, six o’clock, nine o’clock—which understandably pissed him off. Quick as a flash, her assistant placed a sip of sugar water in his mouth, and he brightened, greedy sips replacing his outraged yowls. His li
ttle eyes squeezed shut, cheeks working hard, as the rest of him relaxed.

  “Here we go,” Mary Sarah remarked, yanking his foreskin up, clamping it, and slicing it off. “Okay, little dude, you are circumcised.” As she began to remove her instruments, I cupped his tiny thigh under the sterile drape, unable to resist a surreptitious squeeze of his baby fat.

  Mary Sarah snatched the drape away, exposing my hand. “Getting your fix?”

  I grinned. “Squeezing baby fat releases endorphins,” I said. “It’s science.”

  “Okay.” She gently squeezed his other thigh. “Oh, you’re right. That’s fantastic. I think I can skip my run today.”

  I was smug.

  She whacked me on the bottom. “There’s some more endorphins for you. Now quit molesting my patients and get your echo done.”

  The nurse wheeled the circumcision baby away, replacing him on the procedure table with another tiny, pink-faced bundle, this one for me. Involuntarily, we both glanced in the direction of the doors just beyond the newborn nursery, which led to the NICU. This baby had no recognizable abnormalities on the prenatal ultrasound, but his twin brother had not fared so well: he’d been diagnosed with tricuspid atresia, a condition incompatible with life without a series of major surgeries.

  The ultrasound tech appeared and set up her machine with silent efficiency. The infant, who’d been sleeping, wakened with a squall of outrage as the tech placed the ultrasound probe on his chest. His cries started somewhere in the piercing range and progressed almost immediately to an earsplitting wail.

  Mary Sarah tried a pacifier. Quickly rejected.

  The ultrasound tech grimly soldiered on but stopped after a moment. “This,” she said, “is a really pissed-off baby.”

  Mary Sarah concurred, hands over her ears. “I can pretty much guarantee the echo is going to be normal. That’s quite a workout he’s getting.”

  “I hear babies cry all day,” said the tech, “but this is intolerable. How is he so loud?”

  “We may need to sedate him.”

  The baby’s face was now a lurid shade of purple. “No worries. I got this,” I said. I picked him up and cuddled him to me, forgetting about the ultrasound goo, which immediately melded my shirt to my chest.

  He cried louder.

  I began the universal side-to-side rocking motion adopted by all life-forms confronted with a screeching baby, to no avail. I turned him around, so his back pressed against my now-slimy chest, and nodded at the tech. “Go ahead.”

  “You know I need him flat, Dr. Anson.”

  I laid him down again, lowering my head next to his. He screamed.

  “Let’s go, le-eh-et’s go,” I sang. “Don’t take it back anymo-or-ore.”

  The crying got fractionally quieter.

  I increased my own volume. I twirled in place.

  The baby stared in my direction, a perplexed expression on his face. The crying dwindled.

  “And HERE I am, and HERE I go . . .”

  Next to me, Mary Sarah and the tech were convulsed in silent laughter.

  I flung my head back and my arms out. “Da da da NOW . . . I . . . SAY . . . the snow never gets to me anywaaaaay!”

  In the background, other people had joined their voices to mine, a swelling chorus filling the newborn nursery, most of them undeterred by my mangled lyrics. We finished with a spectacular crescendo, proclaiming our unified resistance to the cold, the last note echoing with a theatrical flourish. The baby hiccupped one last little protest and then peacefully closed his eyes, snorting a little as he drifted back to sleep.

  After bowing to a round of sustained applause, I read his echo—normal—and found his battered parents to give them the good news. This was the last of my Monday morning newborn echos, so I decided to head to the physicians’ lounge to grab a quick latte before walking down the street to my office. The second I set foot in the room, I wanted to pivot and go back out, but it was too late: she’d seen me.

  Emma wore scrubs and a green surgical cap, her sculpted cheekbones thrown into high relief without strands of hair to soften her face. I pretended to study the bulletin board next to the coffee machine, half reading a bossy notice instructing us not to consult a local urology group that had somehow incurred the wrath of the hospital administration. I sensed Emma looking at me and felt my cheeks flame up. This was silly; I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  I marched toward the door, clutching my hot cup. Emma intercepted me just as I reached it; she placed a cool, long-fingered hand on my arm. I wrenched away.

  “I have to go.”

  “Please,” she said. “Five minutes.”

  I wavered. Emma realized this and pounced, drawing me outside the lounge and into the empty hall. “I’ll walk you to the garage.”

  We trudged along, mute, until finally she broke the silence. “Please let me tell you I’m sorry.”

  This seemed insufficient for the depth of her betrayal.

  “I don’t want to talk about it here,” I said, abstractly noting some scene playing out in the hospital lobby, with a big family group wailing and gnashing their teeth and rending their garments, metaphorically speaking. We moved past them, silent again.

  “You’re right,” Emma said, once we’d cleared the drama in the lobby. “Meet me for dinner tonight. Let me tell you the truth.” She looked me directly in the eyes. “Please.”

  “Oh,” I said, softening.

  She continued: “I don’t know if I can do anything to save my job, but I know this: if I had to pick between saving my job and saving my friendship with you, it wouldn’t even be close. I’d pick you.”

  I stopped walking. Emma had never wanted to be anything other than a surgeon.

  “Did something else happen with the Packards?” I asked. I’d deliberately avoided the thought of the meeting scheduled with them this weekend.

  “Not directly,” said Emma. “But I just met with Nestor Connolly and the hospital’s attorneys. They’re advising me to take a leave of absence. Starting tomorrow.”

  I looked at her: usually ramrod-straight, her spine slumped, and her clear skin held the grayish cast of fatigue. Against my will, I felt some sympathy. It was ridiculous for the hospital to side against Emma; this was not a clear-cut case of medical malpractice. “Look,” I said slowly, “I’ll meet you tonight. But you agree right now: you’re going to tell me the entire story. Everything.”

  “I will,” said Emma, her voice low.

  The implications had dawned on me slowly, despite Nick’s admission of why he carried the photo. Human nature being what it is, my first reaction was shamefully self-centered: a sharp knife thrust puncturing my core when I recognized their faces. I ached for myself. They did this to me, to me, to me.

  But they hurt someone else, too.

  “You have to tell me what happened with Graham,” I said. We’d reached the physicians’ parking lot, and I stopped, leaning against my dust-speckled car.

  A whispered response: “I know.”

  “And how it started with Nick and how it ended. All of it.”

  I could hear her breathing: measured, slow inhalations, a little jagged at the end. “I will.”

  “Okay, then.” I took a belated sip of my coffee. “I’ll see y—”

  “I used to see him for years,” she said hoarsely.

  A small dart in my chest. After all these years, how could Nick still have the power to wound me?

  “For years?” I managed.

  “I’d look up in the grocery, or at the gym, and he’d be standing there like a dumbstruck giant, with his hair ruffled, in his flannel shirt, looking right into my eyes. I’d blink and look again, and it would be someone else, of course, but for one heart-stopping second, I’d think . . .” She trailed off. When she spoke again, I could barely hear her. “I wanted it to be him so badly.”

&nbs
p; Graham. She meant Graham. “Oh, Em—”

  “When you think back on our trauma rotation,” she said, her voice stronger, “it was the hardest part of medical school, right? Working hundred-ten-hour weeks, staying awake for forty hours at a time?”

  I agreed. “Agonizing hours of standing still. Withering barrages of questioning, daily public humiliation. Foul odors.”

  Now Emma’s voice became clearer. “Right. And people dying. But the irony of trauma was, I emerged from that rotation unscathed. Every day on that service dealt some stranger a life-altering—or life-ending—blow, but I was too dumb to let it touch me. People’s lives were disintegrating all around me, but the trauma that finally unglued me was all self-generated. I watched people break apart and I was fine. I watched people die and I was fine. I gave you a sanctimonious little speech on understanding the consequences of our actions when your pregnant trauma patient died, and I was fine. Then I broke me, and I broke our friendship, and I broke Graham. And finally I understood what it means. Trauma.”

  A gaggle of young nurses passed us on their way in: tailored pastel scrubs, ponytails, boisterous bright lips and cheeks. “Emma,” I said. I thought back to the person I’d been as a young adult, and it was like she had been someone else: a drifting, formless human shape, missing some elemental piece, until finally enough experience stuck to her to fill in the gaps. Could I not forgive Emma for something that had happened so long ago? “I’ll see you tonight.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  YOU MEAN THERE’S MORE?

  Zadie, Present Day

  A lighter mood gripped me that evening as I waved goodbye to Drew. Driving through uptown, I felt zippy, lighthearted, relieved of a burden. Anger was such a debilitating emotion; why couldn’t people see that? Over the course of the day, I’d resolved to forgive Emma, and it felt good. I tend to follow the same pattern when somebody wrongs me: I stew over it obsessively, my mind churning through all the variables as I replay the incident, thinking of what I should say. I catalog their offenses. I verbally dissect them. Zingy rejoinders fly from my lips until my enemy folds into supplicating apology, humbled by her absolute wrongness. After I’ve done this several hundred times in my own head, there’s seldom a need to confront anyone in real life. I’m over my anger.